Social Influence Case Study
- Conformity, Asch (1951)
Procedure (AO1)
- He devised a line judgement task to assess the extent at which people conform to other
people’s opinion
- He studied 3 variables: Group size, Unanimity and Task Difficulty
Group Size (AO1)
- He varied the number of confederates from 1-15 with 1 genuine participant
- He found that conformity increased as more confederates were added, but up to a point
- With 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but conformity levelled
off as more confederates were added
- Suggests that most people are still sensitive of 1-2 opposing opinions
Unanimity (AO1)
- Asch introduced a confederate who went against the confederates
- The genuine participant conformed less in the presence of the dissenter as this acted as
social support
Task Difficulty (AO1)
- Asch made the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar
- He found that conformity increased when the task is more ambiguous, and this can form
Informational Social Influence (ISI) for the genuine participant
Research Support (Strength) (AO3)
- Lucas et al. (2006) asked participant to solve easy and hard maths problems
- Genuine participants conformed more to the wrong answer when the problem was harder
- Evidence that task difficulty can increase conformity, increases validity of results
Artificial task (Limitation)
- Participants knew they were in an experiment which could’ve cause Demand Characteristics
- And the Line Judgement task does not resemble daily life
- Findings did not generalise to real-world situations which decreases ecological validity
Not cross-cultural (Limitation)
- Asch’s participants were all American men, so findings in women may have been different as
they may have conformed more or less, and US is an individualist culture
- This reduces the ability to generalise the findings to women and different cultures which
decreases modern validity
Ethical Issues (Limitation)
- Naive participants were deceived as the thought the confederates were genuine participants
- So he broke ethical guidelines which can decrease the reputation of the experiment in the
modern world
- He also needed to make sure the debriefed the participants
- This is similar to experiments like Milgram’s
- Conformity, Asch (1951)
Procedure (AO1)
- He devised a line judgement task to assess the extent at which people conform to other
people’s opinion
- He studied 3 variables: Group size, Unanimity and Task Difficulty
Group Size (AO1)
- He varied the number of confederates from 1-15 with 1 genuine participant
- He found that conformity increased as more confederates were added, but up to a point
- With 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but conformity levelled
off as more confederates were added
- Suggests that most people are still sensitive of 1-2 opposing opinions
Unanimity (AO1)
- Asch introduced a confederate who went against the confederates
- The genuine participant conformed less in the presence of the dissenter as this acted as
social support
Task Difficulty (AO1)
- Asch made the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar
- He found that conformity increased when the task is more ambiguous, and this can form
Informational Social Influence (ISI) for the genuine participant
Research Support (Strength) (AO3)
- Lucas et al. (2006) asked participant to solve easy and hard maths problems
- Genuine participants conformed more to the wrong answer when the problem was harder
- Evidence that task difficulty can increase conformity, increases validity of results
Artificial task (Limitation)
- Participants knew they were in an experiment which could’ve cause Demand Characteristics
- And the Line Judgement task does not resemble daily life
- Findings did not generalise to real-world situations which decreases ecological validity
Not cross-cultural (Limitation)
- Asch’s participants were all American men, so findings in women may have been different as
they may have conformed more or less, and US is an individualist culture
- This reduces the ability to generalise the findings to women and different cultures which
decreases modern validity
Ethical Issues (Limitation)
- Naive participants were deceived as the thought the confederates were genuine participants
- So he broke ethical guidelines which can decrease the reputation of the experiment in the
modern world
- He also needed to make sure the debriefed the participants
- This is similar to experiments like Milgram’s
